Letter from the editor: No scapegoats, remember

Perhaps I was a touch premature writing what a treat it was to delve into the readers’ letters...

We all pitched up at i Block H bright-eyed on a gloomy Sunday to create today’s paper only to hear from Mrs E.A. Gross that “after your first week replacing the usual editor ....the whole style of the paper has changed” because we published a picture of Kate Moss. Please, Mrs Gross, I am “standing in for” not “replacing” — are you trying to get me fired? No need to answer that.

John Jobson is upset we allowed mention of a 16-year-old Canadian pop singer’s haircut. Don’t look at page 2 Mr Jobson, who is clearly not a Belieber. A more worrying letter came from Graham Howard, not because he failed to see the joke in my describing the i team’s hunt for a scapegoat after mistakes (we don’t really chant “burn the witch”), nor that he ignored my tribute to i’s subs, but more because he wrote “Dear Defano” atop his letter.

However, we’ll be sure to take up his suggestion: “why not discuss it as a team and learn lessons?” Trouble is, the meeting would roll over to Tuesday’s i. There’s so much to discuss: from not taking the royal wedding seriously enough (this aimed at a sister paper of The Independent!) to Catherine Zeta Jones’s Welshness. So, I called an urgent meeting to discuss reader Chris Jackson, who had studied our racing tips, and made a 20p profit on a £1.50 bet, and decided he’d give up his day job and become a full-time gambler, but half the crack i team were engrossed in England v India, and the rest were watching Brum humble Arsenal. So if, bizarrely, it goes awry Chris, don’t blame me. No scapegoats, remember.